Lakeside Bagel & Deli

Need a go-to place for when you’re visiting the Lake Erie region and you’re craving New York-style bagels any day of the week? While other shops only steam bread in the shape of a bagel, Lakeside Bagel & Deli kettle boils the bagels then bakes them fresh every day — that’s how they achieve the crunchy outside and soft inside. They’re so fresh and so good, they don’t even need toasting, just like a great New York bagel.

What also sets them apart is they are open 7 days a week. Proprietors DeAnna and Tony Arnt used to have to turn people away when they operated out of a smaller space for 19 years. In 2021, they moved into the 2,500-square-foot space down the road at The Mill, just off the highway in downtown Edinboro. Now they’ve got plenty of parking, plenty of seating and plenty of refrigerator space to bake an average of 800-1,000 bagels each day.

The most popular varieties? “Plain and Everything, of course — the two extremes,” DeAnna laughed. While says she recognizes they’re a bagel shop, not a coffee shop, she asks that you give them a chance on fancy drinks. They offer iced or hot mochaccinos — cappuccino shots mixed in with coffees and flavorings. People come back repeatedly for the bananas foster flavor and the snickerdoodle. They also bake scones, muffins and other baked goods in-house daily.

The most in-demand seasonal bagel is the dill pickle bagel, available Memorial Day Weekend through Labor Day Weekend. People come from all over for this summertime delicacy, made with chunks of fresh dill in the dough. Another popular offering for the last several years is the lox cream cheese — rather than the typical smoked salmon atop a schmear of cream cheese, Tony and Deanna recure the lox with a mix of salt sugar and dill, and then chop it finely into a mixture of cream cheese and dill, so the salmon is prominent in every bite. Lakeside also offers seasonal cream cheese, all made from scratch, like the popular snickerdoodle, as well as the birthday cake cream cheese in August, when the shop celebrates its anniversary.

For those with dietary restrictions, Lakeside offers gluten-free options. While they don’t make gluten-free bagels, you can get any sandwich on two egg patties instead, or enjoy options like egg salad, tuna salad or house-made hummus and chicken salad — all made from scratch as well. The shop also bakes gluten-free peanut butter cookies, gluten-free cinnamon muffins and gluten-free chocolate chip muffins, all made in their own mixer but baked in a common oven.

Customer service is a big deal here; DeAnna says customers comment weekly on how amazing the staff of college and high school students are. “The key to a successful business, other than the community you serve, is how you treat your staff — we treat each other like family here, and every employee really cares about this place.”

Lakeside Bagel is open Monday-Friday from 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Sundays from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. They accommodate tour groups, so call to schedule your group at (814) 734-8590.